Get RoboKiller and block these robocalls automatically!

Add Comment

By submitting a comment, you give us permission to publish your comment publicly.

1 user report for
(352) 486-7276

The comments below are user submitted reports by third parties and are not endorsed by RoboKiller.

May 24, 2020

Scam

Fake student loan, vacation, cruise, health insurance, hearing aid, Medicare, Social Security disability benefits, medical alert, energy consultant, solar, home security, car insurance or warranty extension, or employment scam call by madarchod criminals phoning from India
This is a scam call by criminals phoning from India, trying to steal your credit card number, Social Security number, date of birth, and personal information.
This scam phone call may begin with one of dozens of introductions such as:
"Hi, this is Erin, I am a vacation specialist calling on a recorded line in the awards department. Can you hear me okay?"
or "Hello, this is Joe, and I am a trip advisor in the gifting department and I am calling on a recorded line. Can you hear me okay?"
or "Hi, this is Natalie. I am a hearing administrator calling on a recorded line. How are you doing today?"
or "Hi, this is Tracy on a recorded line and I show here that you recently inquired about your eligibility for Social Security disability benefits. How are you today?"
or "Hi, this is Casey. I am a Medicare advisor calling on a recorded line. How are you today?"
or "Hi, this is Susan on a recorded line calling on behalf of Medicare Plus discount card. How are you today?"
or "Hello, this is Dean in the health department on a recorded line. How are you doing today?"
or "Hello, this is Crystal on a recorded line calling on behalf of A1 medical. How are you today?"
or "Hi, this is Preston. I am with our student loan relief department on a recorded line. How are you doing today?"
or "Hey, this is Kate from Simple Life Debt Solutions on a quality recorded line. We are reaching out because you were looking for a loan, correct?"
or "Hi, this is Sarah from Choose My Degree on a recorded line. How are you today?"
or "Hello, this is Devon in the credit department on a recorded line. How are you today?"
or "Hi, this is Lynette. I am with the mortgage placement team calling on a recorded line in regards to your recent mortgage inquiry. How are you today?"
or "Hi, this is Richard. I am a senior account executive in the publisher's department on a recorded line. How are you doing today?"
or "Hi, this is Scarlett. I am a homeowners associate calling on a recorded line in regards to safety concerns within your home. How are you today?"
or "Hi, This is Mark and I am a medical alert systems emergency specialist on a recorded line. Can you hear me okay?"
or "Hi, this is Lorraine. I am one of your local electric consultants in the area on a recorded line. Can you hear me okay?"
or "Hi, this is Justin. I am a senior executive in our automotive department on a recorded line. Can hear me okay?"
or "Hi, this is Andrea. I am an auto saving specialist on a recorded line. Can you hear me okay?"
or "Hello, this is Connor. I am in our company's employment department on a recorded line. Now, I show you inquired about a job on one of our websites. How are you doing today?"
Note that these calls all begin with the same format - fake name introduction, fake job title, and ending with a simple question. They use a huge variety of fake names with numerous natural-sounding male/female voices. The fake "recorded line" phrase just tries to make the call sound like a legitimate business.
This initial speaker is not a human, but an automated interactive voice response (IVR) software that sounds very human and speaks great English with no accent, but you are initially talking to a software-based robot who asks you some questions and responds based on your replies. For example, if you do not quickly reply to the first question, the robot is programmed to ask, "Are you there?" Because the first question expects a short reply, if your voicemail says several sentences, the robot quickly hangs up. After working through its programmed script, the robot then transfers you to the real scammer.
The India scammer often asks for you by your name in order to make the call sound like a personal phone call to gain your trust, but they are auto-dialing thousands of numbers. It is easy to acquire huge phone database listings of millions of names associated with phone numbers and addresses and have the autodialer display the name that is currently dialed. The scammer then asks for your credit card number, Social Security number, date of birth, and other personal information under the pretense of either selling you fake health insurance, hearing aids, Medicare, Social Security disability benefits, medical alert monitoring, prescription drugs, student loan forgiveness repayment plan, credit card or loan offer, solar panels, home security system, vacation/hotel/cruise prize offer, car insurance or warranty extension, or pretending to set you up for fake employment with their fake job offer that is based on a lie about you visiting their nonexistent website, or various other scams. Their scams try to lure you with discounts and free gifts such as 20% off hearing aids, 80% off drugs, 0%-interest credit cards, free cruise - it is ALL FAKE. This particular scam is spoofing thousands of fake Caller ID numbers, and many of their scams are targeted towards elderly seniors in the U.S. who have also been preyed upon by thousands of other India scammers.
More than 95% of all North America phone scams originate from crowded phone rooms in India that rotate through hundreds of different fraud, extortion, and money laundering scams every day such as pretending to be a fake pharmacy, posing as fake Social Security officers saying your benefits are suspended, fake IRS officers collecting on fake unpaid back taxes, or fake bill collectors threatening you for fake unpaid debts, pretending to offer fake health insurance, car warranty, student loan forgiveness, credit card and debt consolidation services, posing as Amazon to falsely say that an unauthorized purchase was made to your account or that your Prime membership was auto-debited from your credit card or bank account, posing as Microsoft/Dell/HP/Apple to say that your software needs renewal or they detected a problem with your computer, fake "we are refunding your money" or "your account has been auto-debited" scams, fake Google/Alexa listing and work-from-home scams, pretending to be a bank or Fedex/UPS/DHL, falsely stating that they installed ransomware virus on your computer and you need to pay them money, etc, fake fundraisers asking for charity donations, fake political and lifestyle phone surveys, and the scammers try to steal your credit card, bank account and routing number, or Social Security number and personal information. Many scammers try to gain your trust by asking for you by your name when they call, but the autodialer is just dialing thousands of phone numbers and automatically displaying your name when your number is dialed from a phone database that contains millions of names, numbers, and addresses in the U.S. Many India scammers phone you with an initial pre-recorded robotic person speaking English, Spanish, or Chinese that is easily generated using text-to-speech translation software to disguise the origin of their India phone room, but then you speak to the India scammer when you take the bait and respond to the pre-recorded message. Some speech synthesis software sound very robotic, but others sound very natural.
Scammers often either use disposable VoIP phone numbers (e.g. MagicJack devices) or they spoof fake Caller ID phone numbers. Anyone, including you, can use telecom software or a third-party service to phone using fake names and phone numbers that show up on Caller ID. India scammers often spoof fake toll-free Caller ID numbers that begin with "8". The Caller ID name and number is often useless with scam calls unless the scam setup asks you to phone them back and the Caller ID area code is almost never the area from which the scam call actually originated since many scams use fake Caller ID area codes from across the U.S. and Canada, totally invalid area codes, and also purposely faked foreign country Caller ID numbers (e.g. fake women crying "help me" emergency scams from India often spoof fake Mexico and Middle East Caller ID numbers). Some India scammers also spoof the actual real phone numbers of businesses such as Apple, Verizon, and U.S. banks so when you phone the number back, you realize that you were scammed from the spoofed Caller ID number of the actual business.
How can you avoid being scammed by phone calls (and also emails)? Never trust any unsolicited caller or anyone who phones with any sales offer (most unsolicited sales calls are scams so your odds of saving money are very poor); offers of a "free gift"; legal or arrest threats (pressure tactic); callers or recordings who tell you to reply back within a few hours (pressure tactic); unsolicited callers who demand that you access a website, download a file, wire transfer money or buy gift cards immediately while they stay on the phone with you; claims of suspicious activity on an account; claims of refunds or auto-renewed/auto-debited accounts; and any pre-recorded messages. A common India scam calls you with a fake Amazon recording of a suspicious purchase of an iPhone, but Amazon never robo-dials you like this and Amazon account updates are communicated in emails. Many banks do use automated fraud alert phone calls to confirm a suspicious purchase, but always verify the number that the message tells you to phone or just call the number printed on the back of your credit card. Any unsolicited caller with a foreign accent (nearly always Indian) should immediately be treated as a scam until carefully proven otherwise. Many scams tell a lie that you recently inquired about a job, social security benefits, doctor appointment, insurance, or that you recently contacted them or visited their website, and they try to steal your personal information and SSN.
To hide their foreign accents, some India scammers have now added non-Indians to their phone room and many India scammers begin the call using interactive voice response (IVR) robotic software that combines voice recognition with artificial intelligence, sounds incredibly human, speaks clear English with dozens of American voices, listens to your speech, and responds based on your replies. Four common IVR setups used by India scammers begin the call with either: (1) "Hi, this is (fake name), I am a (insurance, Medicare, Social Security disability benefits, awards, loan, vehicle warranty, vacation, prescription, debt collection, employment, etc) specialist on a recorded line, can you hear me okay?"; (2) "Hi, this is (fake name), how are you doing today?"; (3) "Hello? (pause) Are you there?"; or (4) "Hi, may I speak to (your name)?" Their personal introduction may vary, but most IVR scam calls immediately ask you a quick question to elicit a yes/no affirmation so it can quickly hang up if it encounters voicemail. The IVR robot can understand basic replies, yes/no/what? answers, and basic questions. To test for an IVR robot, ask them, "I am cooking right now, what is your favorite food?" If their reply does not make sense, then ask, "How is the weather over there?" A human scammer will think you are a friendly unsuspecting target and reply reasonably, but IVR software cannot answer complex off-topic questions. IVR robots also usually keep talking if you loudly try to interrupt them in mid-sentence. The IVR usually transfers you to the India scammer, but some phone scams entirely use IVR with the robot asking for your credit card or SSN.
Phone and email scams share two common deceptions: (1) The Caller ID name/number and the "From:" header on an email can be totally fake, and the Caller ID is often spoofed using phone numbers of innocent people and businesses; and (2) The phone number and information on a scam phone call is malicious just as the file attachments and website links on a scam email are malicious. Always hover your mouse over links in email text to display the true destination and learn how to analyze raw email headers such as "Return-path:" and "Received:" which provides a trace of the servers that handled the email from its origin to your mail server (e.g. a true Amazon email will start from a domain name owned by Amazon).
Phone and email scams snowball for many victims - if your personal or financial data are stolen, either through a phone or email scam, clicking on a malicious website, or by a previous data breach of a business server that stores your data, then your personal data gets shared and sold by scammers on the dark web who then see you as fresh meat and prey on you even more. That is one main reason why some people receive 40+ scam phone calls every day while others receive 0 to 2 scam calls per day. Credit card numbers sell for $5 to $20 on the dark web, bank account numbers and email passwords sell for as much as $500, and Social Security numbers sell for $1 to $10 just for the name with number or more than $300 if the SSN includes full name, address, date of birth, and drivers license information.
India scammers do not care about the U.S. National Do-Not-Call Registry and asking scammers to stop calling has no effect. Many American telemarketers will honor your request to be removed from their phone database, but India scammers do not care. Some India scam recordings tell you to press a number to be placed on their do-not-call list, but that is a lie to make the scam sound like a valid business. A few India scammers even tell you that they will stop calling if you buy their fake insurance or fake drugs, which is laughably false. I love to play with these scammers and keep them on the phone by pretending to be interested in their scam. You do these scammers a favor by yelling at them and immediately hanging up since they shrug off all the profanities that they hear. But you ruin their scams by slowly dragging them along on the phone call, calling them back if their phone number can be phoned, pretending to be interested in their product or service, pretending that you are worried when they threaten you, always giving them fake credit card numbers and fake personal information, asking them to speak louder and to repeat what they said to use up more of their energy, pretending to innocently ask the scum why he is shouting profanities at me, etc. The best defense against phone scammers is a good offense by not quickly hanging up the phone, but instead toying with them for at least 10 or 20 minutes to use up more of their time and energy so they have less time to deceive an elderly victim. Scammers do not earn a fixed annual salary. If you waste their time while you continue to do other things, you make them poorer for sitting there trying to scam you. If you immediately hang up, their autodialer quickly connects them to another target victim. If the scam lets you phone them back (e.g. Social Security and IRS scams), do not just repeatedly phone them and start yelling, but scam the scammers by acting interested or concerned.
Never give an unknown caller your credit card number or Social Security number. Companies who already have your information may ask for the last four digits for verification. Some India scammers ask for your bank account and routing number or ask you to wire transfer them a payment, giving a fake explanation that they cannot accept a credit card or personal check. Scammers can steal money if they know your bank account and routing number (e.g. counterfeit cashed checks) and wire transfers are far less traceable than unauthorized credit card charges. India scammers may threaten to have you arrested, but the IRS, SSA, and debt collectors cannot threaten to arrest or sue you on the phone; they are required to send you paper notices by registered mail. The police and FBI will never phone you and say that officers are coming to arrest you (many India extortions threaten to send officers); if the police really want to arrest you, they just show up with a warrant without phoning first. Some India scammers ask you to use your browser to visit a website that allows the scammer to directly access and control your computer and then they can install a ransomware virus to extort money from you, or they ask you to download a virus file to your computer. These same remote desktop websites are used by both legitimate technical support and India scammers to see and click on your screen.
If the scam sounds very authentic, ask the scammer for their verifiable company name, street address, and a callback number that can be googled and matched to the company name and address, which all real businesses will provide. Every Indian scammer will immediately fail this test since they all use spoofed fake Caller ID numbers or VoIP numbers that they can quickly dispose of. Scams often prey on fear (you are going to be arrested or your account was hacked), ignorance (your fake account subscription was auto-renewed/auto-debited), or greed (that 80% savings on fake drugs or insurance, free Bahamas cruise, or 0%-interest loan is just a scam to steal money and identity theft data). If you are foolish enough to give your credit card or SSN to a random stranger to buy fake drugs, insurance, or loans, then you should blame yourself for being scammed.
Most unsolicited calls are scams nowadays, usually with a very subtle to very thick Indian foreign accent, and most scam calls originate from India. No other foreign country is infested with pandemics of numerous noisy sweatshops filled with phone scam criminals who belong to the lowest India caste and many are thieves, robbers, and rapists who were serving jail sentences but released early due to prison overcrowding. Most India scammers are men, but many are women who also readily shout profanities and the cowards tell you that they will blow up your house (which is fake just like their scam). Just laugh at their abusive language. Google "Hindi swear words" and memorize some favorites to piss on these scammers, e.g. call him "Rundi Ka Bacha" (son of a whore) or call her "Rundi Ki Bachi" (daughter of a whore). But if you can spare at least 10 minutes, first scam the scammer before abusing them by sounding interested, asking them questions to keep them talking and having to think harder because they veer off their rehearsed script, do not overdo the acting, and feed them totally fake information (16 random digits starting with 4 for Visa and 5 for Master Card, when the scammer says the card does not work, ask them to repeat the number and try again, and then tell them "try my second card number", and then give them a third 16-random-digit number starting with 3 for Diners Club).